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Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

anu.edu.au

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Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#221

Post by curiously »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #177
antimagic wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it fascinating at just how much of our fundamental physics ends up being constraints on information movement. The laws of thermodynamics are about entropy, general relativity puts constraints on the movement of information (for example, Spooky Action as a Distance(tm) is faster than light, but you can't transmit information with it), the Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much information you can…

I'm fascinated by such things also. I often can't help thinking of God as a programmer, though I don't know how much of that is confirmation bias of my priors as a theist and a programmer. But I've always thought the periodic table and DNA both felt a lot like code...

I think it isn't a coincidence that there is so much order and elegance behind the building blocks of our physical world and the universe but the result is chaotic, and unpredictable.

Maybe it's just our brain discovering patterns that don't mean anything.

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#222

Post by mesozoic »

Strilanc wrote: post #166
zw123456 wrote: post #86

And perhaps someday we'll get to meet the great programmer in the sky the developed the simulation we are living in and we will ask him why he designed it that way and he will say something like "oh I just wanted to optimize the code so I simply excluded reality subroutines when there were no beings looking. I just never thought you guys would notice. As soon as I saw that you guys noticed the flaw, I was going to lo…

That would quite possibly be the worst optimization ever. "Yeah, I could have tracked and updated n values pretty cheaply, but instead I decided to exponentiate an exponentially huge matrix and use that to update a vector containing 2^n complex numbers associated with the possible assignments of the original n bits. Also, you should use bogosort. It's the best."

Yeah but maybe they know how to make P=NP

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#223

Post by jdmichal »

Strilanc wrote: post #161

The linked article is titled "Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness". Please don't exaggerate the title. These experiments do not show that "reality doesn't exist until it's measured". First, "realism" [1] is not the same thing as "reality". "Realism" basically means "physical quantities have a definite value". "Reality" is that thing that determines your experimental outcomes. Don't mix them up. Second, inter…

To be fair, the submitted title is directly culled from the first sentence of the article:

> The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured.

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#224

Post by charlieflowers »

Kequc wrote: post #196
hasenj wrote: post #84

I'm not familiar with this particular experiment, but all my pondering on the subject - as a layman - leads me to a simple conclusion. The properties these experiments are measuring are simply bogus. They are not well defined. The answer that comes out is not some intrinsic property of the "particle", but the result of the environment in which the particle interacted with the "measurement" system, so to speak. The pa…

The topic outlined in the OP's article has been raised before, multiple times, once every couple of years. It was even the focus of a cult indoctrination propaganda piece called "what the bleep do we know". http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.h... Essentially, yes, it's bogus science. Quantum physics are much more complex than these articles ever bring on. But by explaining it simply, it sounds…

However, we can achieve things using the multi-state characteristics that would be impossible without them. For example, quantum computing. We have confirmed actual speed increases for algorithms using quantum computing which could not happen if the underlying particles were not actually in multiple states.

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#225

Post by squozzer »

antimagic wrote: post #154
zw123456 wrote: post #86

And perhaps someday we'll get to meet the great programmer in the sky the developed the simulation we are living in and we will ask him why he designed it that way and he will say something like "oh I just wanted to optimize the code so I simply excluded reality subroutines when there were no beings looking. I just never thought you guys would notice. As soon as I saw that you guys noticed the flaw, I was going to lo…

I always find it fascinating at just how much of our fundamental physics ends up being constraints on information movement. The laws of thermodynamics are about entropy, general relativity puts constraints on the movement of information (for example, Spooky Action as a Distance(tm) is faster than light, but you can't transmit information with it), the Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much information you can…

Pretty much, but consider the alternative - hypothetically infinite universes, inifitely divisible particles, turtles upon turtles...

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#227

Post by marcosdumay »

antimagic wrote: post #154
zw123456 wrote: post #86

And perhaps someday we'll get to meet the great programmer in the sky the developed the simulation we are living in and we will ask him why he designed it that way and he will say something like "oh I just wanted to optimize the code so I simply excluded reality subroutines when there were no beings looking. I just never thought you guys would notice. As soon as I saw that you guys noticed the flaw, I was going to lo…

I always find it fascinating at just how much of our fundamental physics ends up being constraints on information movement. The laws of thermodynamics are about entropy, general relativity puts constraints on the movement of information (for example, Spooky Action as a Distance(tm) is faster than light, but you can't transmit information with it), the Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much information you can…

You can reconstruct every mathematical theory as information flow and restrictions. That's a property of mathematics (Turing found that), not physics.

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#229

Post by drdeca »

hasenj wrote: post #195
ilitirit wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory

When people talk about hidden variable theories they still assume a definite answer exists. I'm saying the answer doesn't exist because the question is not really valid in some sense. Which kind of coincides with the idea that "the observable doesn't exist until measured", but I'm taking a little further and saying, it doesn't exist even when "measured" because you're not really measuring the thing you think you're m…

It seems to me there would still be a fact of the matter as to whether the person would enjoy a particular type of food prepared in a certain way, in a certain context, even if that situation never occurs or is considered?

Re: Reality doesn’t exist until it is measured, quantum experiment finds

#230

Post by kstenerud »

cristianpascu wrote: post #183
Strilanc wrote: post #161

The linked article is titled "Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness". Please don't exaggerate the title. These experiments do not show that "reality doesn't exist until it's measured". First, "realism" [1] is not the same thing as "reality". "Realism" basically means "physical quantities have a definite value". "Reality" is that thing that determines your experimental outcomes. Don't mix them up. Second, inter…

A standard case of mixing (or actually confusing) epistemology with ontology. That is to say that something doesn't exist until we get to know something about it. Or, by all means, knowing something about something is posterior to us being here AND that something being there. Here lies the danger of dismissing philosophy as a bag of words when compared with the Holy Science that works, bitches .

Or: Through the scientific method, we have discovered something that we cannot explain, and so people are now floating wild ideas that they know MUST be true.

... Which is exactly what the scientific method was designed to prevent. Categorically stating that nothing exists without our eventual knowledge of it is the height of arrogance.

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